People

Rex Nielson, Director of the Humanities Center

Rex P. Nielson is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the BYU Humanities Center. His interests include literary and cultural studies, especially in relation to the Portuguese-speaking world. He has taught all levels of Portuguese language as well as a variety of courses on Luso-Afro-Brazilian literature and culture, as well as interdisciplinary courses for Latin American Studies, Africana Studies, Global Women’s Studies, and the BYU Honors Program. His research interests focus on (1) ecocriticism and environmental ethics in Brazil and the global south, (2) race and gender in Luso-Brazilian culture, (3) language and literature pedagogy, and (4) translation studies. He has served in various professional organizations, including as the President of the American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA) (2019–2020). Rex and his wife, Natalie, an adjunct professor in the Department of Comparative Arts and Letters, live in Provo and are the proud parents of five children.

Brooke Browne, Assistant Director of the Humanities Center

Brooke Browne originally joined the BYU Humanities Center in 2015, and she is excited to be back as the Assistant Director after a 2-year hiatus. She loved growing up at the base of the mountain in Mapleton where she now lives next door to her childhood home. She graduated from BYU with a BS in Home and Family Life and a minor in Music in 2003. She and her husband Jeremy (Research Professor, Office of Digital Humanities) are the parents of 4 boys, with only 17-year-old twins at home. When she’s not dreaming of her favorite place (Paris), Brooke enjoys playing piano, baking, watching K-Drama, and cheering on the Cougars.

Rob Colson, Marshall Professorship and Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2026 – 2029)

Robert Colson received his PhD in English from the University of California, Irvine and is an associate professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at BYU. His research interests include modern and contemporary anglophone fiction, particularly modernist and postcolonial writers such as James Joyce, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Virginia Woolf, and Salman Rushdie. His work has appeared in venues such as James Joyce Quarterly, ARIEL, Research in African Literatures, and ISLE. He is currently working on a monograph about nationalism and on articles about Future Library and Rushdie’s Quichotte.

Brian Croxall, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2024 – 2027)

Brian Croxall is Associate Research Professor of Digital Humanities at Brigham Young University. His research interests include American and English literatures from the nineteenth century to the present; game, trauma, and media studies (not all together!); comic strips, especially Peanuts; and pedagogy. With Diane K. Jakacki, he is the co-editor of What We Teach When We Teach DH (2023), from the University of Minnesota Press. He is also the co-editor, with Rachel A. Bowser, of Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures (2016, Minnesota). He has served in various national and international professional organizations, including as a member of both the Executive Council and Program Committee of the Modern Language Association.

Sharon Harris, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2026 – 2029)

Sharon [or Dr. Harris] studies the intersections of literature and music in the early modern period and holds degrees in music, humanities, and English literature. She has published in various journals and collections and has been the recipient of various fellowships, including from the Newberry and Huntington libraries. Sharon’s current research examines the uses and reappropriations of English masques and their music across the seventeenth century. She has also published and presented on theological readings of the Book of Mormon and is the author of Enos, Jarom, Omni: A Brief Theological Introduction. Sharon and her husband are the parents of two incredibly delightful boys.

Katya Jordan, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2026 – 2029)

Dr. Katya Jordan teaches Russian language and literature in the Department of German and Russian. Her research focuses on Russian journalism of the late nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the life and political writings of Mme. Olga Novikoff and the literary journalism of Fyodor Dostoevsky. She earned her Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Virginia.

James Swensen, Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2024-2027)

James Swensen is professor of art history and the history of photography at Brigham Young University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 2009. His research interests include American photography, the art and photography of the American West, and the representation of pilgrimage. His work has appeared in History of Photography, TransAtlantica: Revue d’Études Américaines, American Indian Quarterly, and The European Journal of American Culture, among others. He is also the author of two monographs: Picturing Migrants: The Grapes of Wrath and New Deal Documentary Photography (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), and In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953-1954 (University of Utah Press, 2018), which won the Juanita Brooks Best Book Award from the Utah Historical Society in 2019. He also co-authored (with Farina King and Mike Taylor) Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School, published by the University of Arizona Press in 2021.

David Laraway, Scheuber and Veinz and Three-Year Faculty Fellow (2026 – 2029)

David Laraway is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. He received his PhD in Romance Studies (Hispanic Literature) from Cornell University in 1998. In addition to Árbol de imágenes: nueva historia de la poesía hispanoamericana (with Merlin H. Forster), he is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics in Hispanic Literature and Culture, from modernista poetry to contemporary Basque narrative to Chilean cyberpunk. In 2015, he completed a second PhD in Philosophy, Art, and Social Thought at the European Graduate School (EGS) in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he took seminars from Simon Critchley, Slavoj Zizek, Michael Hardt, and Lev Manovich, among others. In 2018, he published American Idiots: Outsider Music, Outsider Art, and the Philosophy of Incompetence (New York: Atropos). In 2020, he published Borges and Black Mirror (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan). He served as the chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese from 2011–17 and of the Department of Philosophy from 2019–22.

Jon Balzotti, One-Year Faculty Fellow

Jon Balzotti is an Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University whose research examines how writers develop professional judgment in authentic workplace settings. Drawing on rhetoric and experiential learning, his scholarship explores how students learn to interpret complex situations and negotiate competing constraints while making sound decisions under conditions of uncertainty. His recent work also investigates how artificial intelligence is reshaping professional communication and writing instruction, with particular attention to preparing students for AI-mediated workplaces.

He is the creator of Playable Case Studies, immersive workplace simulations that place students in realistic professional environments where they must navigate the rhetorical challenges of workplace communication. His research argues that professional writing is best understood as situated rhetorical action and investigates how authentic workplace experiences can help students develop transferable writing practices. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, Pearson Education, and Brigham Young University.

Balzotti’s scholarship has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, The WAC Journal, The International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, and other venues. He is currently writing a book that proposes a framework for teaching situated writing in the age of artificial intelligence.

At Brigham Young University, Balzotti serves as the Professional Writing and Rhetoric Program Coordinator, College Experiential Learning Coordinator, and Managing Editor of Experience Journal. He teaches courses in rhetoric, professional writing, technical communication, and user experience, where he continues to explore how immersive learning environments can bridge the gap between classroom writing and professional practice.

Brett McInelly, One-Year Faculty Fellow

Brett C. McInelly earned his PhD in English literature at the University of Cincinnati in 2000, at which time he joined the English department at BYU. Shortly after his hire, he became interested in the literary reception of Methodism in eighteenth-century Britain and his research has culminated in more than a dozen articles and two monographs, Textual Warfare and the Making of Methodism (Oxford UP, 2014) and Methodism and the Rise of Popular Literary Criticism: Reviewing the Revival (Routledge, 2023). His current project, Performing Methodism and the Eighteenth-Century British Stage (forthcoming, Liverpool UP), examines Methodism’s complex and contested relationship with the theater. He  also serves as the series editor for Bloomsbury’s Cultural History of Religion and has recently begun work on a new project entitled “Read All About It!” Methodism in the Eighteenth-Century British Newspaper.

Jasmine Torres, Humanities Center Social Media Intern

Jasmine Torres is a senior at Brigham Young University, where she’s majoring in Public Relations and minoring in Asian Studies. As the Social Media Intern at the BYU Humanities Center, Jasmine plays a key role in the Center’s digital outreach, creating engaging content and fostering a sense of community. Originally from Central California, Jasmine brings a rich multicultural perspective to her work. She’s fluent in Spanish and is actively learning Korean. Outside of her academic and professional life, Jasmine loves playing tennis and pickleball. Jasmine is excited to leverage her diverse experiences and skills in a future career dedicated to meaningful and inclusive communication.

Sawyer Wood, Humanities Center Intern and Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

George Dibble, Graduate Student Representative

George Dibble is a writer. He reads. He is from Florida and is studying English. The American Modernists (such as the Imagists, within the movement’s poetry sector) are close friends of his, and he plans to continue discussing them at the PhD level. Dibble enjoys a simple life and is grateful to be surrounded by such inspiring light at BYU. You can find many of his publications on his website: https://georgedibble.com/.

Brooke Farnsworth, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Brooke is a senior majoring in English Teaching and minoring in Global Women’s Studies. Brooke grew up in Southern California and loves the ocean. She loves reading and writing (thus, the English degree) and hopes to become a professor. Brooke is fascinated by Victorian poetry and the intersection of theology and literature. She currently works as a research assistant studying the fine press movement. She also works at the Research and Writing Center. Brooke recently presented at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference on Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Brooke spends her free time baking, walking, writing, attempting to crochet, and looking for cats.

Aiden Jones, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Aiden Jones is a Junior majoring in American Studies and English. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky with her parents and three younger siblings. She loves her work as a tutor at the campus Research and Writing Center and is the Assistant Program Director for the American Studies Program. She plans to pursue a master’s degree focused on American Literature and is especially fascinated by transatlantic modernist writers. Someday she hopes to be a professor so she can spend her life at school. Aiden spends time outside of school baking, reading, writing, hosting poetry nights, watching movies at International Cinema, hiking, skiing, and running.

Porter Kindall, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Porter is a senior studying Interdisciplinary Humanities and Philosophy. His research interests lie in contemporary French philosophy, hermeneutics, and Latter-day Saint Studies. When not academically engaged, you can find him watch Kore-Eda films, in the kitchen, or feeding the ducks. 

Julia Morgan, Eliza R. Snow Undergraduate Fellow

Julia Morgan is an Interdisciplinary Humanities major with a minor in Global Environmental Studies. She is co-president of the GES student association, creator of the BYU Stewardship Symposium Student Writing Seminar, and part of the BYU IFSA committee. She also loves her job at BYU’s Research and Writing Center (with Aiden!) She’s interested in connection in conflict and interfaith; as well as nature writing and ecocriticism. When she’s not dashing around campus, she loves to run, read, and bake.